The increasingly interconnected nature of our world means that failing to achieve coherence between climate- and peace and security-related policy domains forms a significant climate-related security risk. Poorly designed climate policies that are insensitive to pre-existing insecurities and conflict dynamics may undermine political stability, amplify social inequalities and grievances, and accelerate a loss of biodiversity and climate change-related impacts.

This report is a part of the EU DeSIRA project titled “Five Great Forests of Mesoamerica: A regional initiative for climate, biodiversity, and people” led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). It presents the findings of an assessment and prioritization exercise aimed at promoting sustainable livelihood alternatives among the communities of Central Belize River Valley.

Africa is one of the lowest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change, yet key development sectors
have already experienced widespread losses and damages attributable to human-induced climate change, including biodiversity loss, water shortages, reduced food production, loss of lives and reduced economic growth (high confidence).

Increased reliance on fertilizers and pesticides in rice production has proven unsustainable and ineffective due to soil depletion and pesticide-induced pest outbreaks, rising fertilizer costs, and the negative effects of pesticide and fertilizer use on human health and the environment. The integrated rice-fish system offers a large range of environmental, economic, and social benefits by improving diversification, intensification, profitability, and sustainability through the complementary utilization of land and water uses.

In order to safeguard countries from quarantine risks (insect pests, pathogens, nematodes, parasitic weeds) associated with the movement of legume (faba bean, lentil, chickpea, grasspea) and cereal (wheat and barley) germplasm, ICARDA’s Germplasm Health Unit (GHU) follows a regulatory and quarantine program implemented in close collaboration with competent institutions where ICARDA has platforms for crop breeding, germplasm multiplication and evaluation and genetic resources exchange.

Abiotic factors play an important role in most ecological and crop systems that depend on
certain levels of temperature, light and precipitation to initiate important physiological events
(Schulze et al., 2019). Understanding how these factors drive the physiological processes is
a key approach to provide recommendations for adaptation and biodiversity conservation in
applied ecology studies. The package climatrends aims to provide the methods in R (R Core
Team, 2020) to compute precipitation and temperature indices that serve as input for climate

The current paradigm of biodiversity conservation, with its continued focus on the notion of pristine nature, has resulted in the separation of humans and nature at the expense of both biological and cultural–linguistic diversity. The continued annexation of land for the cause of conservation has resulted in the curtailment of both rights and access to local and diverse food sources for many rural communities.

To leverage agriculture's potential to better benefit both people and nature, policymakers need clear messages about which farming practices positively impact biodiversity and yields, and when trade-offs arise. Existing reviews analyse effects of different agricultural practices on either biodiversity or yield, without considering interactions.

Establishing protected areas creates an opportunity to reduce deforestation. This study aims to inform the Congolese government’s efforts to promote forest and biodiversity conservation by assessing the effectiveness of the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve (YBR) in reducing deforestation. Group and individual interviews designed to understand the causes of pressure on forest cover in the Yangambi landscape complemented satellite imagery analyses. The results indicate that deforestation inside the YBR is not significantly different from outside the YBR.

Meet district participatory land use team member, Patrick – also known as the peacemaker – who helps communities implement CGIAR’s Joint Village Land Use Planning process. Learn how the process can help pastoral and farming communities mutually agree on how to use shared land so that everyone can manage and conserve resources peacefully, to achieve livelihood, biodiversity and environment outcomes. Created by and for the International Livestock Research Institute and the CGIAR initiative on Livestock and Climate.

This chapter by Yuliani et al. begins with a brief description of the Adaptive Collaborative Management process that occurred in the early 2000s in the village of Baru Pelepat in Jambi province, Indonesia – a process facilitated by these authors. After a brief introduction to the community itself, Yuliani et al. launch into a description of the bottom-up process that resulted in local communities getting legal rights to manage a special forest area near their community, an area that had been part of Indonesia’s forest estate.

In the tropics, combining food security with biodiversity conservation remains a major challenge. Tropical agroforestry systems are among the most biodiversity friendly and productive land-use systems, and 70% of cocoa is grown by >6 million smallholder farmers living on <2$ per day. In cacao’s main centre of diversification, the western Amazon region, interest is growing to achieve premium prices with the conversion of high-yielding, but mostly bulk-quality cacao to native fine-flavor cacao varieties, culturally important since pre-Columbian times.